The Silken Tent
My Letter to the World
April 2002



 
April 14, 2002
Sunday


The hardest part of coming back after a long silence is opening up the file to see just how long it's been. I was wrong by two weeks. I thought I'd been absent from this space for a month. It's been six weeks.

I have no idea now why I didn't write here in the three weeks between March 2 and March 22. I did interesting, thought-provoking things. I had a birthday (55th on March 9), bought Lynn a car (a 1995 Camry with 92,000 miles), shepherded her through a six-page paper on the effect of Stalinism on the work of Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn (work such as I was not expected to do until I was a junior in college), spent a day at Penn State University doing preliminary research for a new poetry project, and took Lynn and two other girls to a performance of The Wizard of Oz at the school where I used to teach.

And then it was the 22nd. I had what I had been describing as "some oral surgery." Actually it was the placing of five dental implants (artificial roots), a procedure that took six hours under general anesthesia.

I completely misunderstood and underestimated the effects of what was happening to me. I had two implants placed back in 1992, an event that caused some minor swelling and discomfort for about twenty-four hours. I failed to regard this event as major surgery (despite its being done in the dental surgeon's office rather than a hospital) and was unprepared for the toll it took on my body and my spirit.

I had some complications, mainly a mild viral infection (the common cold, presumably), probably a secondary bacterial infection, and unpredictable, hard to manage side effects from the medication designed to manage the infections. Each new medication produced a side effect which required a neutralizing medication, which in its turn produced another side effect. All the while my mind kept struggling to "be myself," to continue with the reading and the writing and the social activities by which I define myself.

The turning point came about ten days ago. I sat down at my writing table, which was bathed in a glorious golden spring light. Outside, white and yellow daffodils nodded in the breeze, the squirrels chased each other hither and yon through the trees and the flower beds, and a rare pair of Eastern bluebirds roosted near the wind sock. I took my pen in my hand, and burst into tears because I couldn't figure out how to construct a sentence about what I saw, nor could I figure out why it might be useful to do so.

It had been a very long time since I'd felt such despair. I was home alone. By the grace of the providence that watches over me, I made some wise decisions. I made appointments with my acupuncturist and my psychotherapist, skipped the next dose of ibuprofen (likely the main cause of the depression), grabbed a bottle of water, sat on the floor of my study, and waited.

I've improved steadily since then. Outlining the whole sorry course here makes me see it more objectively, although that can be a danger as well as a benefit. The danger is that I will forget how bad I felt, stop taking care of myself as I have been for the last week (lots of fresh water, fresh fruits and vegetables, no red meat except a Big Mac on Friday that turned out to be a very bad idea), and descend again into the depths. I've  done a little writing the past few days, and might even revisit fiction soon.

I just paid a year's fee to the service that hosts The Silken Tent. I think that  means I'm still interested in writing here, although a long discussion on a journals list recently addressed the question of whether or not the thrill is gone from the genre. Thanks to everyone who is still reading, despite the long gaps.

 


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Margaret DeAngelis.

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